When I was writing this past Thursday’s case study with Wattpad, a writing and storytelling platform with a large mobile audience, I began considering the ways that marketers are still underestimating mobile.

With Wattpad’s story, it seems almost heroic that they focused on community in the mobile ad experience instead of treating it like most others do — as an obligatory necessity that they just assume users will tolerate. Until, that is, you understand the dividends that focus paid, boosting in-app video completion rates by 98%.

A MarketingSherpa Award’s Readers’ Choice nominee, Skyjet, also understood how profitable focusing on the mobile experience could be. The marketing team experienced a lot of disruption due to mobile marketing habits in the charter marketplace in Q4 of 2014, according to Jonathan Levey, Senior Digital Marketing Manager, Flexjet, and his company had to begin experimenting to keep up.

The team decided to differentiate themselves from competitors in the private charter mobile app game through the user experience. By creating an app with instant, ungated pricing, as well as the distinguishing ability to allow customers to use Apple Pay, they were creating a positive experience.

“It’s as simple as downloading the app, entering your itinerary, reviewing options or instance prices and booking your flight,” said Levey. “Doing all of that with the ease and seamlessness of Apple Pay allows you to do it between 30 to 60 seconds.”

The app calculated around 1,500 itinerary searches on a weekly basis, but most importantly, he said, “It has changed the way we do business.”

By creating that unique and focused user experience, the team was able to compete in a very competitive space, and it made customers want to use the app as a first choice.

“Mobile marketing is very broad, and if you’re going to do an app, you need to have a really clear focus on what you want to offer in it and have [provide] a great user experience,” Levey said. “Because if you have a great user experience, people are going to gravitate toward using the app.”

In this interview conducted by MarketingSherpa last year at IRCE with Louis Dejianne, Director of Retail and Consumer Products, UPS, he talks about how, in their yearly ecommerce survey, 60% of customers were purchasing products on their mobile device at least monthly.

“On your mobile device, there’s a lot of clutter. Whether it be email or text messages. So it’s very important to deliver the right message at the right time while you’re on your device so you can take action to make a purchase,” Dejianne said.

Every marketer knows they must have a mobile option — even if it’s not an app. Too often, the resulting product is clearly obligatory, the bare minimum of what customers require and will accept out of a mobile experience.

But as we rely more and more on our devices, consider what kind of experience you are creating. Will you be able to break through that clutter to become a user’s first choice?

With a focus on aspirational, customer-first marketing, Courtney’s goal has been to produce clear, interesting and actionable external content for MarketingSherpa readers. This has included writing over 300 case studies, moderating live event interviews, and producing video content. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in English Literature, Mass Communications and Film Studies from Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Ind., and was a correspondent for USA Today College prior to joining MECLABS Institute.